2,211 passages in Rabbinic Midrash
Individual passages from Yalkut Shimoni on Torah, shown in source order. Page 41 of 47.
The sages keep turning the verse "And He called to Moses" over in their hands, and here they read it through a line from the Psalms: "Then You spoke in vision to Your pious ones." ...
Why does the Holy One single Moses out with that intimate call at the start of Leviticus? Rabbi Tanchuma builds his answer from a proverb: gold and rubies are fine, but lips of kno...
Scripture opens the book of Leviticus with a tender word: God called to Moses before He spoke to him. The sages noticed that this courtesy was not extended evenly to everyone. To A...
A single verse tucked into the genealogies of Chronicles becomes, in the hands of the sages, a hidden roster of Moses' many names. The text speaks of a "Jewish wife" who bore a son...
The midrash keeps mining the names in the Chronicles verse, and each one yields another facet of Moses. The name Jered, already read as "the one who brought down," is now heard a s...
The list of Moses' names grows until it reaches ten, and the rabbis treat each one as a window into a deed or a virtue. "Soco" recalls how he turned away calamity from the world. "...
Rabbi Eleazar offers a reading that lifts Moses higher: when God called to Moses, all Israel could hear the call going out, and the verse records it precisely to give honor to Mose...
Why does the verse bother to mention that God called before He spoke? The sages answer that the Torah is teaching derech eretz, the basic courtesy that should govern human life. A ...
The midrash sets two scenes side by side. Picture a king angry with a servant, who has thrown him into prison; when that king sends instructions about the prisoner, he issues them ...
The midrash hears a quiet message in the doubled name "Moses, Moses." The repetition, it teaches, signals continuity of character: he was the same Moses before God spoke with him a...
The rabbis pressed on a small, strange detail. The Torah marks out only three places where the LORD addressed Moses directly: in Egypt, at Sinai, and in the Tent of Meeting. Each t...
One verse seems to slam a door shut: "For no man shall see Me and live." The sages turned it over. Rabbi Dosa heard a softer reading inside it. The living cannot see, he said, but ...
The previous teaching had leaned hard in one direction: the LORD spoke with Moses only for Israel's sake, never for Moses himself. Here the sages catch the danger in that and pull ...
The word "saying" gets a third reading, and now it describes a two-way street. Go out and tell them, the LORD instructs, and bring back to Me what they answer. The sages anchor bot...
Rabbi Elazar opened with a legal instinct. The Torah was given at Sinai, but a law is not enforced the moment it is signed. A royal decree may be written and sealed and carried int...
The verse simply says, "Speak to the children of Israel." The sages heard tenderness in it and reached for the prophet's image of a beloved toddler. "Is Ephraim a precious son to M...
Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman read Scripture's word choices like a careful lawyer, and found the Torah protecting Israel even in its grammar. Take the laws of poverty. One verse promise...
Rabbi Berekhiah imagined the Holy One setting a standard for every offering by pointing back to the very first one. Think of Adam, He says. The whole world was his, every creature,...
A single phrase in the Torah, "Speak to the children of Israel and he shall lay his hand," carries a quiet ruling: the act of pressing one's hands upon the head of an offering belo...
Who is fit to press his hands upon a sacrifice? Nearly everyone, the sages answer, except those whose minds cannot fully consent to the act: the deaf-mute, the one who has lost his...
The Torah's word "of you" is read as a quiet sorting: not all of you, but a distinction drawn within Israel. The same passage that seems to shut out the apostate turns and opens a ...
The sages keep probing the boundary line of who may bring an offering, weighing one verse against another. Rabbi Shimon reads the laws of the unwitting sinner with striking precisi...
When a person wished to forbid something to himself by a vow, the sages did not want him reaching for the plain word "offering." So they fashioned a small family of look-alike word...
Rabbi Yose notices something about how the Torah spells the divine Name beside the word "offering." It writes the Name with its sacred letters in a way that leaves no loophole for ...
The Torah's phrase "from the animal" is read as an exclusion: a beast that was party to a forbidden coupling with a human, whether it mounted or was mounted, may not be brought to ...
Two more creatures are read out of the altar by the repeated phrase "from the cattle." The first is an animal that was itself worshipped as an idol. The sages test whether logic co...
The sages press a single stubborn question: why does the written Torah need a verse to keep a fatally injured animal off the altar? Logic alone, they argue, should manage it. A ble...
Two sages weigh the very same opening words of the burnt-offering passage and pull in opposite directions. Rabbi Yehudah hears the repeated little words — "this," "it," "the burnt ...
The sages hunt for the exact scriptural word that keeps a corrupted animal off the altar, and they refuse to let any single derivation stand without testing it. The candidates for ...
Can two friends pool their devotion into a single burnt offering? Can a whole community pledge one together, beyond the offerings the calendar already demands? The sages will not s...
The passage moves from which offerings carry the strict disqualifications — obligatory as well as freely vowed, even an animal substituted for another — into a deeper paradox about...
A strange case sharpens the whole question of intention. A person brings a sin offering to the altar, but speaks a contradiction over it: let this be offered, yet let it not atone ...
Can a thief launder a stolen animal into a fit sacrifice simply because the original owner has given up hope of ever getting it back? The sages say no, and they say it with force. ...
When Israel could lawfully offer on private altars, scattered across the land, certain rites of the central sanctuary did not travel with them. Two in particular are at stake here:...
The Torah commands that the one bringing an offering must lay his hands upon it. The Rabbis describe the choreography with care. The animal stands in the north of the courtyard, it...
One small word in Leviticus, "his hand," does an enormous amount of work, and the Rabbis turn it over slowly. The hand must be the owner's own, not his son's, not his slave's, not ...
A person brings an animal to the altar, presses a hand upon its head, and hopes for something he cannot purchase outright: that the Holy One will look upon him with favor. The sage...
Some things in life cannot tolerate a gap. The sages noticed that certain holy acts demand to be linked so tightly that nothing slips between them, no pause, no distraction, no coo...
The same three pairings return, but now the sages anchor each one in a verse of Scripture and reveal what is at stake. Read the Psalms in order, they say, and the pattern is alread...
Who is actually allowed to wield the knife at the altar? The answer surprises many. The slaughter of even the most holy offerings is valid when performed by a non-priest, by a woma...
Can a sacrifice be ruined by a wandering mind? Shmuel puts the question to Rav Huna, and the answer is unsettling: yes. If the one who slaughters acts absentmindedly, treating the ...
Once the animal is slaughtered, its blood must be caught, and here the open door closes. The catching of the blood may be done only by a fit priest holding a sacred vessel. Rabbi A...
The verse says "the sons of Aaron," and the sages read every word as a fence. Not the daughters, for this priestly labor of receiving the blood belongs to the men of the line. Not ...
How do you turn two applications of blood into four? One sage says you place the blood at a corner and place it again; another says a single stroke bent like the Greek letter gamma...
A priest stands at the base of the altar, vessel in hand, the lifeblood of the offering caught and waiting to be dashed against the stone. But what if his grip slips? What if the b...
What happens when the blood has been dashed but the flesh of the offering is somehow lost before it reaches the fire? Does the whole sacrifice collapse? The Sages answer with a str...
Stand at the doorway of the sanctuary and the verse fixes the place exactly: "at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting." Not while the camp is being broken down, not when a gust of w...
How do we know the great principle that the law follows the majority? The verse "to incline after the many" (Exodus 23:2) seems enough, but the Sages press harder. That verse handl...
